quarante ans_, with their "_deux ressources, la devotion et le bel
esprit"; Contre Poisons_,--indispensable in those days of jealousy
and assassination; _Pots de Fleurs_ form an item of the most limited
establishment; emblems, such as _Rubans_ and _Bonnets Rouges_, are
described as essential to the intelligent conduct of the visitor; and a
chapter is devoted to Gallantry, of which a modern author in the same
department pensively remarks, "_Cette ancienne galanterie qui vivait
d'esprit et d'infidelites est comptletement denaturee_."

It is curious how municipal, economical, and social life are thus
simultaneously daguerreotyped and indicate their mutual and intricate
association in the French capital. Its history involves that of
churches, congresses, academies, prisons, cemeteries, and police, each
of which represents domestic and royal vicissitudes. What other city
furnishes such a work as the Duchess D'Abrantes' "Histoire des Salons
de Paris"? The _salons_ of Madame Necker, Polignac, De Beaumont, De
Mazarin, Roland, De Genlis, of Condorcet, of Malmaison, of Talleyrand,
and of the Hotel Rambouillet, etc., embrace the career of statesmen
and soldiers, the literary celebrities, the schools of philosophy,
the revolutions, the court, the wars, diplomacy, and, in a word, the
veritable annals of France. Society, according to this lively writer, in
the proper acceptation of the term, was born in France in the reign of
the Cardinal de Richelieu; and thenceforth, in its history, we trace
that of the nation.

Throughout the most salient eras of this history, therefore, is visible
female influence. Cousin has just revived the career of Madame de
Longueville, which is identified with the cabals, financial expedients,
and war of the Fronde; tournaments, which formed so striking a feature
in the diversions of Louis XIV.'s court, owed their revival to the whim